Industrial Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) Processes

Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) processes are commonly used to produce thin functional films for a large variety of products ranging from electronic chips to potato chip bags and flat screen TV’s.  PVD is the process of choice when a large substrate area has to be uniformly coated with a defect free and controlled microstructure.  Sputtering and thermal evaporation are the predominant PVD processes in use and come in a wide variety of source – substrate arrangements and source technologies.  Typical thin film PVD coating thicknesses range from several nm to micrometer and are typically applied on lower temperature substrates.  Because of the complexity and the cost of the PVD equipment, only very few applications with a coating thickness of more than 100 micrometer in the regime of thermal spray coatings have been commercialized. The presentation explains the fundamentals of PVD processes, gives an overview on the most common industrial PVD applications and then highlights two PVD processes currently used for aero and power generation engines: the Electron Beam Physical Vapor Deposition (EBPVD) process for thick thermal barrier coatings on turbine blades and vanes, and the Cathodic Arc process for TiN based sand erosion protection coatings on compressor airfoils.